Economy comes from the Greek, Oikos, which means home. It is about managing a farm, an activity not just for you; then to the next and even on to customers. This more or less formal science exists for 4000 years, with regional trade, where people could no longer just trade goods, China used bronze objects as currency. Later they introduced silver or gold coins, the weight of which represented the value of the goods sold.
Some 600 years ago, North Italian bankers invented the symbolic currency, on paper, guaranteed by gold/silver bars. Some of them cheated clients and many governments established central banks some 400 years ago; if in panic people asked for goods instead of a piece of paper, only a symbol for real values.
A huge financial speculation led to a stock market crash that brought about the first major world crisis, the misery of the 1930s with the consequent discredit in so-called democratic rulers, and Nazism in power in then strong countries, such as Germany, Italy and Spain.
Until the expansion of the European Community in the 1980s, all central banks had a gold backing of the total outstanding value of the papers that would be the wealth of the citizens. In order to show works, following proposals from speculative funds, governments have stopped demanding that the banknotes circulating in the country have a proportion to the existing real assets, gold, real estate or bonds with minimal risk.
The Chicago school, monetarist and non-economist, says that what counts is printed paper at the behest of ministers increasingly influenced by speculators. Not the real economy.
The Euro is the height of contempt for the citizen, whose objective is to allow the ECB, banks and funds to settle at the expense of real economy. The Euro enlivened huge banks in France and Germany, at the expense of the small ones, such as Greece and Portugal.
The 2008 crisis was predictable. Not an expert, I published on Nov/11/04 in the Algarve and in Mar/05 in Economico / Lisbon, that the Lisbon Stock Exchange would soon implode; shortly later, that we would have a serious crisis in 2008. On Mar/01/10 I stated in TV ‘PROS&CONS’ that we were not in crisis, but in a recession that could last for ten years. So far it has not been overcome.
The bilingual book ‘Portugal Post-Troika? Economic Democracy?’ launched at CIP, then debated with the then CEO of the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, proved the ECB's uselessness and the social injustice it brought. The ‘People vs. Democracy’, by Yascha Mounk, shows a lot of scientific research proving that in recent years inequality in income distribution has grown a lot, distrust in institutions and politicians has jumped and young people today prefer the dictatorship to the so-called democracy.
The expected stagnation in 2020 will create income loss, which will lead to a worldwide catastrophe. This all recalls the 30's, with strong populism in many countries, Hitler and Mussolini.
It is now vital to stop Chicago and put the human and the real economy in front of banking and speculations.
